A means for measuring safety climate in the university work setting

To address the risks inherent to various occupations, risk management programs are typically put in place that include worker training, engineering controls, and personal protective equipment. Recent studies have shown that such interventions alone are insufficient to adequately manage workplace risks, and that the climate in which the workers and safety program exist (known as the “safety climate”) is also an important consideration. While safety climate studies have been reported for several industrial settings, published studies on assessing safety climate in the university work setting in the US are absent. Universities are particularly unique workplaces because of the potential exposure to a diversity of agents representing both acute and chronic risks. In addition, principal investigators within these universities operate independently often with minimal administrative oversight making it difficult to build strong a strong safety culture. The goal of this research study was the development and implementation of a measurement tool of safety climate specifically in the university work setting. At five universities, 971 participants completed an online questionnaire to measure the safety climate. The safety climate scores across the five universities ranged from 3.57 to 4.16 on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 indicating very high perceptions of safety at these universities. The two lowest overall dimensions of university safety climate were “recognition of safety performance” and “department and supervisor's safety commitment”. The results underscore how the perception of an organization's safety climate is significantly influenced at the local level. The safety climate questionnaire developed for this study may be used in the future to measure safety climate in the university work setting.